Dr KARL SHUKER

Zoologist, media consultant, and science writer, Dr Karl Shuker is also one of the best known cryptozoologists in the world. Author of such seminal works as Mystery Cats of the World (1989), The Lost Ark: New and Rediscovered Animals of the 20th Century (1993; greatly expanded in 2012 as The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals), In Search of Prehistoric Survivors (1995), The Unexplained (1996), Mysteries of Planet Earth (1999), The Beasts That Hide From Man (2003), and more recently Extraordinary Animals Revisited (2007), Dr Shuker's Casebook (2008), Karl Shuker's Alien Zoo: From the Pages of Fortean Times (2010), Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery (2012), Mirabilis: A Carnival of Cryptozoology and Unnatural History (2013), Dragons in Zoology, Cryptozoology, and Culture (2013), A Manifestation of Monsters (2015), Here's Nessie! (2016), and what is already considered to be his magnum opus, Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors (2016), his many fans have been badgering him to join the blogosphere for years. The CFZ Blog Network is proud to have finally persuaded him to do so.

PHONEY PHOTOS OF THE THUNDERBIRD AND BIGFOOT KIND - SHOOTING DOWN ANOTHER TWO EXAMPLES

I recently noted on Facebook that I consider it
very important to publicly expose and debunk fake cryptozoological photographs,
because in doing so it not only prevent
them from cluttering the archives of cryptozoology in the future but also
prevents cryptozoological sceptics from using them as evidence for claiming
that the subject is credulous and not scientifically rigorous. So with that in
mind, here are another two such photos that I have recently been able to shoot
down as phoneys.

The first of these came to my attention on 12
October 2016 while I was browsing online – I first spotted it in the forums
section of the Taurusarmed.net website, where it had been posted by someone
with the username Moondawg on 5 June 2015, but I subsequently discovered that
it had been posted by various other people on a number of other sites too. As
seen here, it is a typical example of the 'shot thunderbird photograph' motif
(click here for the saga of this
ostensibly real but elusive image), of which numerous confirmed fake versions
are still doing the rounds online, and which consist of what appears to be a
vintage photo of hunters posing alongside an enormous dead winged creature, the
thunderbird (aka 'big bird'), fastened with wings outstretched to a wall or barn door. In some
such photos, the thunderbird is avian, in others it is pterosaurian – it is
the latter in the version under consideration here.

The fake 'shot thunderbird photograph'
(creator unknown to me)

As soon as I saw the photo, it seemed obvious to me
that it was yet another fake. I freely confess that I am no photographic
expert, but in terms of both contrast and edges the pterosaur was far sharper
than anything in the remainder of the photograph. Moreover, as a zoologist I
was readily aware that the pterosaur's morphology was consistent with the
typical reconstruction of the American pterodactyl Pteranodon that
was preponderant in books and magazines dating from the 1960s and 1970s, as
opposed to ones from present-day publications and considered by present-day palaeontologists
to be accurate.

With this in mind, I decided to conduct an online
image search in the hope of tracing the original vintage photograph that had evidently
been utilised by the unknown creator to produce this fake 'shot thunderbird'
photo, and within only a very short time I succeeded in doing so. Here it is:

The original vintage hunters photograph that
formed the basis for the fake thunderbird photo (public domain)

I discovered it on the Viewsofthepast.com website, on
a page entitled 'Superior View Hunting & Wildlife' (click here to
visit it), which contained a lengthy series of vintage hunting photos. The
example that had been used as the basis for the fake thunderbird photo was
listed as 'H-CAMP07 Log Cabin Hunters', and clearly dated back to at least the
early 1930s, and quite possibly even earlier than that.

Here is the original vintage hunters photo and the
fake thunderbird photo alongside one another, confirming that except for the Pteranodon
presence in the latter the two are identical:

But what about the Pteranodon image used in
the fake thunderbird photo – where had that come from? Again, it didn't take
long for me to track that down online. It turned out to be a photo of a Pteranodon
model available by various companies as a plastic model kit during the early
1970s (thus explaining why the reconstruction was so dated). I was first
alerted to this model kit's existence via the following photograph of its box from
the Revell-issued version that I found online:

As can be seen, the image of the Pteranodon
on the lid of this model kit's box is almost identical to that of the Pteranodon
in the fake thunderbird photo, and I could readily imagine that if a photo of
the fully-assembled model Pteranodon were taken from slightly above the
model so that its head, neck, and beak appeared slightly lower down over its
body than they do in the picture on the model kit's lid, it would then
correspond precisely with the fake thunderbird version.

Moreover, Facebook colleague Robert Hodge kindly
brought to my attention the following photo of an early 1970s version of the
same Pteranodon model, fully assembled, that had been released by Aurora as part of its 'Prehistoric Scenes' series:

(As a noteworthy BTW: whereas the picture on the
lid of the Revell version of this model is based directly upon the
fully-assembled Pteranodon model itself, the picture on the lid of the
Aurora version of this same model is merely a generic Pteranodon image.)

After I had made public on Facebook my findings
documented here, another Facebook colleague, Joseph McKee, then used the
box-lid picture of the Revell Pteranodon model to recreate via Photoshop
the fake thunderbird photo, and as can be seen here his recreation confirms
beyond any doubt that this plastic model was indeed the source of the Pteranodon
in the fake thunderbird photo:

Moving from 'big birds' to bigfoot: yesterday (21
October 2016), I was once again browsing online when I came upon the following
image, purportedly a vintage photograph showing a shot bigfoot and the hunters
who had dispatched it. I had been browsing various bigfoot-related sites, and
had found it under discussion on several of them. Here it is:

Looking at it, it seemed to me to be another
vintage American hunters photo into which something foreign had been introduced
– on this occasion some form of animal montage creating the supposed bigfoot,
the body possibly being that of a bear, with what may be a gorilla's head
(or a model of one?) superimposed on top of it, because the head and body do not appear to be
continuous (and the body not very gorilla-like anyway). For what it's worth
(pardon the forthcoming pun!), however, there was an additional (and totally
unequivocal) clue readily visible in this 'shot bigfoot' picture that confirmed
beyond any shadow of a doubt that this was indeed a phoney photograph. And that
was the presence of a certain inscription in its bottom left-hand corner,
reading 'Worth1000.com' – because this just so happens to be the name of a
former website that specialised in competitions for producing the best photoshopped
images.

Pursuing this lead, I was able to confirm that the
'shot bigfoot' had indeed been submitted for one of Worth1000's competitions –
specifically, its 'Monster Hoaxes 6' contest, held in early 2012; that it
was Worth1000 Design #8830992; and that the person who had submitted it was
based in the USA and had the username Kryptomaniacle. Click here to see this photo's official submission page. Unfortunately, I was unable to obtain
further information because Worth1000.com has been taken over by the graphic
design website DesignCrowd, and only its members can obtain more specific
details regarding Worth1000 submissions, usernames, etc (and because this
site's members need to be graphic designers, which I'm not, I'm not a member).

However, Kryptomaniacle did state alongside this bigfoot-inspired
photo that he/she had photoshopped it as an April Fool's joke. It came 15th
out of the 27 submissions in the contest (click here
to see all of the entries).
Some entrants provided the original sources used in creating their submissions,
but unfortunately Kryptomaniacle didn't do so.

What I needed to do, therefore, was to do what I'd
done with the fake thunderbird photo – i.e. trace the original vintage hunters photo
that had evidently been used as the 'shot bigfoot' photo's basis. Once again,
it wasn't long before I succeeded in doing this – and here it is:

Original vintage American deer hunters
photograph used as the basis of the fake shot bigfoot photo (public domain)

I found it on the Wideopenspaces.com website, on a
page entitled 'The Good Old Days@ 30 Historic Hunting Photos [Pics]' – click here
to view this page (the vintage deer hunters photo used as the basis for the 'shot
bigfoot' photo is Photo #26). It had originally appeared in Canada's Ottawa Sun newspaper.

As shown below, when the original vintage hunters photo
and Kryptomaniacle's fake bigfoot photo are viewed alongside one another, it
can be readily seen that except for the shot deer in the former photo and the ropes-suspended
'shot bigfoot' in the latter one (plus the image of an ungulate skull
positioned over the body of the 'bigfoot'), the two are identical. Moreover, even
the ungulate skull is a composite, combining the antlers of the deer in the
original vintage hunters photo with the skull from some entirely different
individual (and which may actually be a cow skull rather than a deer skull
anyway).

All that remains to be done now in order to
complete the full exposure of this 'shot bigfoot' photo's origins is to trace Kryptomaniacle's
sources for the 'bigfoot' head and body, and for the ungulate skull placed over
the body. Yet even if this isn't achieved, what I have already revealed here in
relation to it is more than sufficient to verify the photo's fake nature.

Indeed, the 'Worth1000.com' inscription should have
been enough for anyone to have realised straight away that the 'shot bigfoot'
photo was a phoney, which is why I was so surprised to find it the subject of
serious discussion as to its possible authenticity on various websites. Having
said that, I must make a clear differentiation regarding this photo between its
being a fake and a hoax. Yes, it IS a fake, created by Kryptomaniacle using
photoshopping techniques; but it is NOT a hoax, because it was submitted openly
by Kryptomaniacle for a public photoshopping competition, with no intention to
deceive, having been clearly identified by him/her as a photoshopped image. It
is only because it has subsequently been uploaded by others onto various sites
where it has mistakenly been thought to be real that cryptozoological confusion
concerning its true origin and nature has occurred.

My sincere thanks to Robert Hodge and Joseph McKee
for their much-appreciated assistance in relation to my researches documented
here.

From bear to bigfoot - another fake bigfoot photograph that I debunked - click here to read all about it.

4 comments:

i think people even 100+ years ago would recognize something 'very unusual' and would make efforts to capitalize on it. So it would never merely be photographed and left at that. Carnivals have been around for more than 100 years in the US, and they are always looking for attractions. So 'fantastic' photos from the past can almost be dismissed out of hand due to the (lost) monetary aspect.

I'm afraid that's one big problem with so many of these photos, including the one I'm especially sentimental about, the Walter McCann "Airship" photo. (Actually, with that one there's a story of copies being made and circulated all around, but of course that leads to an even bigger problem in a way.)

Amazing how easily that thunderbird photo is found out - especially if you know your Revell history! As for the bigfoot photo, it immediately seems very strange that they had to use a (greyed-out) deer skull to hold it's chin up. That almost looks more odd than the supposed presence of the sasquatch itself.

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